Omagh families want Ministers quizzed

British Cabinet Ministers are to face questions in court over their alleged refusal to press their Irish counterparts to hand over a key informant in the Real IRA who says he knew about the Omagh bomb plot.

The families of the 29 victims of the 1998 Omagh atrocity are compiling a case for judicial review concerning the Government's alleged inaction over forcing Dublin to make the informer available to the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

A secret transcript obtained by The Observer last year recorded a conversation between Paddy Dixon and his handler in the Garda Siochana, in which Dixon claims the Omagh bombing was allowed to go ahead to protect his standing within the Real IRA. Dixon also warns the Irish state that 'Omagh is going to blow up in their faces'.

The relatives of those killed in the bombing have called on the Garda to allow the PSNI team investigating Omagh to interview Dixon, who is now living on the Continent under an Irish police witness protection programme. The PSNI's senior investigating officer, Superintendent Norman Baxter, has made three requests to the Garda to interview Dixon, all of which were denied. Now the Omagh families have asked a London-based barrister to represent them in a judicial review at Belfast High Court into the British Government's conduct in the Paddy Dixon affair.

They claim that Paul Murphy, the Northern Ireland Secretary, and his Security Minister, Jane Kennedy, were told at the end of last summer about Paddy Dixon and his version of events leading up to the Omagh bomb. Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan died in the blast, accused the Ministers of failing to challenge their Irish counterparts to ask for Dixon to be questioned by the PSNI.

'The reason we are taking the judicial review is that the families feel the British Government has not pressed the Irish government for Paddy Dixon to be made available to Norman Baxter's team. Our principal aim is to get Paul Murphy and Jane Kennedy, either by themselves or through their legal representatives, to tell a court of law what they have done to get the Irish government to act on the Paddy Dixon affair.

'There is a deep suspicion that the British Ministers don't want to rock the Anglo-Irish boat, that to raise the Dixon issue would sour relations. But the issue won't go away. 'Why won't the Irish police allow Norman Baxter's team to talk to him? A judicial review can force these questions out into the open.'

Dixon, a master car thief, infiltrated first the Provisional IRA and then, after the 1997 split, helped the Real IRA. He provided intelligence on nine different Real IRA bomb plots between February and August 1998. He had organised the theft of cars which were used to transport bombs and mortar rockets to Britain and Northern Ireland.

In the transcript of a taped conversation between Dixon and his handler, the agent says he gave the Garda intelligence about a stolen car to be used in a bombing in Northern Ireland, just 24 hours before the Omagh massacre. 'They [the Real IRA] had got a car and they ]the Garda] knew it was moving; they knew it was moving within 24 hours of that stage,' Dixon says.

In the transcript Dixon tells his handler that the Garda wanted him to sign a document stating that he would only be moved from Ireland after his cover was blown if he refused to talk to the press. Dixon's handler, Garda Sergeant John White, spent three days in July 2002 being debriefed by the PSNI at a secret location in the Scottish Highlands. Nuala O'Loan, Northern Ireland's Police Ombudsman, has backed the families' call that Dixon be made available to the PSNI over his allegations.